Are you looking for a way to add a little bit more cash to your monthly income? Blogging is an easy and fun way to do it. Just by creating good content and creating a good flow of traffic to the site, you could bring in a few extra dollars.
However, you shouldn’t view it as a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, it takes a great deal of work to bring in a significant amount of money. It all depends on several key factors:
- Blog niche
- Quality of content
- Marketing practices
- Method used to make money
The reality is that many people who try to make money on their blogs never really make a significant amount. This is usually because the blogger doesn’t put in the effort to make it happen.
Too many people believe they can just start writing and quit their day jobs. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. I can’t guarantee you’ll bring in a specific amount of money, and those who do are not telling you the whole truth.
In this step, I’m going to show you some of the best ways to make money from the blog and how you can increase success.
Making Money with Adsense
Adsense is perhaps one of the most popular ways to make money from a blog. Essentially, you show ads on your website for Google. Once the coding for these ads is put onto your blog, the system becomes automated. All you’ll need to worry about is writing content to drive traffic.
The ads you show are often a mixture of context and visitor tracking. This means ads will either match your website’s content or be related to what visitors are looking for based on their own searches. So the ads you see on your site from Adsense may not be the same as what a visitor sees.
How Much Do You Get Paid with Adsense?
What you need to keep in mind is that Adsense has a relatively low-income rate per visitor. One of the metrics you’ll pay attention to is what’s called an “RPM,” or revenue per thousand visitors. This is how much money your website will make for every 1000 people who visit on average. This varies greatly depending on the topic of the site.
For example, a health and fitness site could have an RPM of $1.50 while a gaming blog could be as low as $0.56. This means the gaming site would need more than 70,000 visitors per day to replace a $10 per hour full-time job.
Don’t get discouraged, though. A lot of professional bloggers have made it work and now write full-time while being able to pay the bills. Just don’t expect instant success.
Many bloggers use Adsense as more of a trickling residual income. It constantly makes money as long as people continue to visit the website. It’s also very simple to get started and doesn’t require a great deal of effort to maintain.
Even though you don’t make an incredibly amount of money on the platform, I would still suggest adding it to the website. It’s easy, fast and has potential to keep a flow of cash coming your way.
Adding Adsense to Your Blog
It’s not all that difficult to add Adsense to virtually any website. You don’t need to know how to do any coding and the verification process doesn’t take a long time to complete.
Now, before you get started, keep in mind that Google is going to take a look at your website. If you don’t meet the requirements, you will not be able to use the system. This may depend on your physical location, how much content you have on the blog and what your material is about.
To place Adsense on your blog:
- Go to the Adsense website and sign up.
- Once you’re verified and the account is live, go to the “My Ads” section and click the “New ad unit” button.
- From here, you can customize the size, color and style of the ads you want to use. I would suggest using the responsive ads as much as possible. These will adjust to the size of a person’s device. So if someone is using a smartphone, the ad will be easier to see.
- When you’re done customizing the ad, click the “Save and get code” button on the bottom. You need to copy this code to use on your blog.
You can place the Adsense code in any post, page or text widget of your blog. Just go to the WordPress text editor and paste the snippet. Once the document or widget is saved, the ad becomes live. It may take a few minutes for Google’s system to start feeding you advertisements, though.
Perhaps one of the best places to put the Adsense code is in the top of the sidebar in a widget. This way, the ad is delivered regardless of what blog post a visitor is reading. I would also suggest placing a second ad within the content you’re creating as well. It’s been my experience that in-content ads perform far better than anywhere else on the site.
Making Money with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when a company pays you for any sales you help generate. This is done by placing banners or links on your site that lead to the business. These links have a tracking code that tell the business the consumer came from your blog. If one of your visitors purchases something, you get a commission.
The payout for affiliate marketing is much higher than if someone clicks on an Adsense ad. However, the sales are spread out over a much wider span of time on average. Not everyone who clicks that link is going to make a purchase.
Affiliate marketing is another system that doesn’t require a great deal of effort to maintain. However, I would suggest keeping an eye on the performance of those banners and links. You may want to trade out one business for another if it’s not making you a lot of money.
Can’t You Just Have a Bunch of Affiliate Banners?
Most affiliate programs frown on using a ton of different banners on a single website. After all, you don’t want your blog to look like the side of a Nascar racer. Most of the respectable and well-managed affiliate sites will restrict the number of banners you can use on any one page.
Besides, you want your blog to look professional, not salesy. This is why you should periodically look at the performance of affiliates you are using. If one isn’t making enough money, swap it out for another. Keeping doing this until you find companies your visitors like to buy from.
How Much Can You Make Using Affiliates?
Like Adsense, the likelihood of making money with affiliate marketing goes up when you have a lot of traffic to the blog. The amount you make really depends on what businesses you connect with. For instance, some companies may pay a flat fee when someone makes a purchase while others offer a percentage of the overall sale.
What Are the Best Affiliates to Use?
If you want to increase the chances of making money from affiliate marketing, use companies that are relevant to your blog. For example, a health website may find a great deal of success using fitness-minded affiliates. A website centered around childcare may find success using toy affiliates.
Try to match the companies you use as closely as possible to the type of content you’re writing. This is because those who visit your site for the content are already interested in the topic. Which means they are also more likely to click the banner and make a purchase.
Making Money Promoting Ad Space
You don’t need a third-party platform to technically sell off ad space on your blog. A lot of site owners will offer space to companies to place banners much like affiliate marketing. The biggest difference is that you control the entire process.
This is exceptionally helpful for those who are marketing to local visitors. For instance, you may be able to sell ad space to companies in your home city if your target audience is located there. So if you blog about Los Angeles nightlife and have a large number of visitors, you could sell the ad space to Los Angeles companies who want to advertise.
This method usually requires a great deal more work, though. The entire process of contacting businesses, placing ads, tracking visitors and more is squarely on your shoulders. It’s less convenient, but it has greater potential to make a lot of money.
Luckily, you can install WordPress plugins that will do a lot of the work for you. Some plugins come with the ability to track displays and clicks giving you an accurate method to charge businesses.
Making Money Promoting Yourself
There is nothing wrong promoting yourself as a freelance professional. Many will use their blogs to show off their skills, especially writers and graphic designers. However, blogging can be greatly beneficial as a portfolio for anyone.
Writing a regular blog about the things you know demonstrates your knowledge. It has potential to influence an employer and/or a client’s decision to hire you for a specific task. By adding a blurb on your Contact page about what you offer as a professional, you may start to get messages about hiring you.
It Takes Effort to Make Money Blogging
The bottom line is that it takes a lot of work to make money from a blog no matter which path you choose. For the most part, it’s all about bringing in traffic. More people means more chances for making money. However, this also means more work you have to put in to build a successful website. It’s easy work, but it still requires a lot of effort for success.